My Chiropractic Story

My dream of becoming a doctor and caring for patients began at 12 years old. The coach on my traveling competitive soccer team has been and continues to be a constant source of inspiration. Affectionately named “Doc”, He is a doctor who specializes in internal medicine and dedicated seemingly all of his free time to our soccer team. His example has inspired me as a man, and now as a Doctor. Shadowing him as an adult, I’ve witnessed first hand what patient care should look like.

After continuing to be an athlete throughout high school, I felt a calling for a profession that fused my two passions, sports and medicine. This led me to a bachelors of science in Athletic Training at the University of South Florida and becoming nationally board certified soon after. Upon graduation, I provided sports medicine coverage for a variety of sports at USF, as well as soccer tournaments and many other sporting events for young and collegiate athletes in the Tampa Bay area. I also volunteered sports medicine coverage with the Hillsborough high school football team, while also working in a physical therapy clinic.

After getting my feet wet, the time came to pursue my true passion – Chiropractic. As an Athletic Trainer, I performed whatever treatments necessary to keep our athletes functioning at their highest capacity by treating current injuries and preventing future injuries. Chiropractic care has provided an avenue to not only treat athletes, but to help every person perform better, and feel better.

Like many patients seeking wellness, I did not always understand Chiropractic. It wasn’t until two Chiropractors spoke at an athletic training conference I was attending that I began to understand what Chiropractic was. “Doctors of Chiropractic are physicians who consider man as an integrated being and give special attention to the physiological and biochemical aspects including structural, spinal, musculoskeletal, neurological, vascular, nutritional, emotional and environmental relationships.” In that moment, the truth of Chiropractic sang out to me. Here was an often misunderstood holistic approach to medicine that fights the notion that humans are victims of our genetics and health. At the heart of this revolutionary philosophical model of health are three fundamental foundations for well-being: The physical/structural, mental/emotional and biochemical/nutritional aspects of health. This Chiropractic “Triad of Health” remains a powerful contrast to the reductionistic allopathic (traditional medical) approach, which generally approaches the human body as if it were simply a conglomerate of independent organ systems that have little or no functional relationship with one another. The human body has the amazing ability to heal and in my next blog post, I will discuss the science that supports the long held idea that spinal adjustments can positively affect overall health.